z:\ ambedkar\vol 011\vol11 04.indd MK SJ+YS 5 10 2013/YS 18 11 2013 241
WHAT IS DHAMMA ?
241
But it is not quite so easy to understand how a human being can go on changing—becoming— while he is alive.
“How is this possible?” The Buddha’s answer was, “This is possible because all is impermanent.”
This later on gave rise to what is called Sunnya Vad.
The Buddhist Sunnyata does not mean nihilism out and out. It only means the perpetual changes occurring at every moment in the phenomenal world.
Very few realize that it is on account of Sunnyata that everything becomes possible ; without it nothing in the world would be possible. It is on the impermanence of the nature of all things that the possibility of all other things depends.
If things were not subject to continual change but were permanent and unchangeable, the evolution of all of life from one kind to the other and the development of living things would come to a dead stop.
If human beings died or changed but had continued always in the same state what would the result have been ? The progress of the human race would have come to a dead halt.
Immense difficulty would have arisen if Sunnya is regarded as being void or empty.
But this is not so. Sunnya is like a point which has substance but neither breadth nor length.
All things are impermanent was the doctrine preached by the Buddha.
What is the moral of this doctrine of the Buddha ? This is a much more important question.
The moral of this doctrine of impermanence is simple. Do not be attached to anything.
It is to cultivate detachment, detachment from property, from friends, etc., that he said “All these are impermanent.”
III